In an interview with NYT public editor Liz Spayd, Dean Baquet explains why readers have more power than advertisers in newsrooms now. “The reader has far more power than ever before — and they should,” Baquet says. “I grew up in an era when the most powerful entity in the economics of journalism was advertising. And newspapers didn’t know much about what readers wanted. Their economics were driven by what advertisers wanted. And now the economics of a place like The New York Times are almost the total reverse. Readers pay our bills more than they ever have. We have to listen to them — and I’d really, really rather be listening to a group of readers, even if they’re mad at me, than a group of advertisers who might be mad at me.”